With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.The questions ranged from what he might have known about Sandusky's actions to how the team would perform on Saturday, and even whether wide receivers coach Mike McQueary would be coaching against Nebraska. "It is one of the great sorrows of my life. He also said he was "absolutely devastated" by the abuse case. When the scandal erupted in November, Paterno said he would retire following the 2011 season. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it." "And to be frank with you I don't know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. "You know, (McQueary) didn't want to get specific," Paterno said. and rather than get in there and make a mistake," Paterno said in the Post interview. Paterno waited a day before alerting school officials but never went to the police. McQueary described Paterno as shocked and saddened and said the coach told him he'd "done the right thing" by reporting the encounter. But outrage built quickly when the state's top cop said the coach hadn't fulfilled a moral obligation to go to the authorities when a graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, told Paterno he saw Sandusky with a young boy in the showers of the football complex in 2002.Īt a preliminary hearing for the school officials, McQueary testified that he had seen Sandusky attacking the child with his hands around the boy's waist but said he wasn't 100 percent sure it was intercourse. Paterno was engulfed in a child sex abuse scandal when a former trusted assistant, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of molesting 10 boys over a 15-year span, sometimes in the football building. The reputation he built looked even more impressive because he insisted on keeping graduation rates high while maintaining on-field success.īut in the middle of his 46th season, the legend was shattered. He won 409 games and two national championships. Paterno roamed the sidelines for 46 seasons, his thick-rimmed glasses, windbreaker and jet-black sneakers as familiar as the Nittany Lions' blue and white uniforms. "He will go down as the greatest football coach in the history of the game," Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said after his former team, the Florida Gators, beat Penn State 37-24 in the 2011 Outback Bowl. More than 250 of the players he coached went on to the NFL. The man known as "JoePa" won 409 games and took the Nittany Lions to 37 bowl games and two national championships. Paterno built a program based on the credo of "Success with Honor," and he found both. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community."
His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. "He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been. "He died as he lived," the statement said. His family released a statement Sunday morning to announce his death: "His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled." The second half of the two-day interview was conducted at his bedside. Paterno was described as frail then, speaking mostly in a whisper and wearing a wig.
Not long before that, he conducted his only interview since losing his job, with The Washington Post. 13 for observation after what his family called minor complications from his cancer treatments. Paterno had been in the hospital since Jan. A few weeks later, Paterno broke his pelvis after a fall but did not need surgery. The cancer was found during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. 18 that his father had been diagnosed with a treatable form of lung cancer. His death came just over two months after his son Scott announced on Nov.
Paterno, a sainted figure at Penn State for almost half a century but scarred forever by the child sex abuse scandal that brought his career to a stunning end, died Sunday at age 85. A place where character came first, championships second.īehind it all, however, was an ugly secret that ran counter to everything the revered coach stood for. Happy Valley was perfect for Joe Paterno, a place where "JoePa" knew best, where he not only won more football games than any other major college coach, but won them the right way: with integrity and sportsmanship.
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